As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an Information Handling System (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, global communications, etc. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
An IHS (e.g., a server) may be connected to a network, such as a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN), or the like. The network may include a number of network devices coupled to each other with a certain structure or topology, which another IHS (e.g., a console) in communication with the server may then attempt to discover.
Conventionally, topology construction has been achieved by originating traffic from a server, for example, by booting the server to an Operating System (OS) instance, and having the OS generate traffic from each of the server's network ports. This procedure results in traffic that can be detected by a network device (e.g., a switch), such that the network device acquires the media access control address (MAC address) of the server's source port. The source MAC address can then be provided by the network device to a console in response to a query, and the console may then attempt to correlate the server port MAC address with the switch port with the information received from the switch.
The inventors hereof have recognized, however, that the conventional approach to topology discovery requires going through the expensive operation of booting the server to an OS to simulate traffic, enumerating and simulating traffic through all of the network ports, etc. Moreover, if the discovery boot is done during initial discovery, the information often becomes outdated during the life of the network, for instance, after re-cabling and/or swapping out of hardware.